Empire: Total War

[Calax]

I'm really enjoying the storyline campaign. I just finished the second episode. They are quick, better than a tutorial, and interesting.

Is that 'the road to independence'

 

Yep, it's very solid. George Washington is a pimp.

reportedly he did die when he jumped out a mistresses window pantsless when her husband came home

[Tigranes]

What am I supposed to do with trade ships, leave them in the ports they were constructed in, leave them on top of a green line indication a trade route, Sailing them to neutral trade ports only get's me the option of going to war. Far as I have been able to tell sailing them onto the trade route does not increase the route's revenue, but neither does increasing the number of trade ships docked at a trade port

 

It took me 50 years to figure out for some reason. . Sail them to those gilded gold boxes on the edges of the map; you will get an option to which theatre to sail. Don't pick Europe, America or India, but pick one of those small circles in S.America, W. Africa, E.Africa or Indonesia. You will reach a tiny map with several 'gold anchors' - you park a trade ship in one. Unfortunately, if you get there late, it's all pretty occupied and I think you can't kick them out unless you trigger war and take your warships there or something.

[Kaftan Barlast]

Talking about trade ships, Ive had mine there for 20 years but it took until NOW for themto start delivering ivory. I have no idea why. And Sweden now controls the whole coast from Georgia to edge of Texas. The French Ai was stupid enough to sell me New Orleans in echange for some useless indian terriroty :D

[Enoch]

I think I'm too indecisive to play this game. There are too damn many options (and too damn many potential consequences) that, when pressed to decide something, I tend to just freeze up and spend yet another turn quietly building my infrastructure and reinforcing my garrison troops.

[Tigranes]

Talking about trade ships, Ive had mine there for 20 years but it took until NOW for themto start delivering ivory. I have no idea why. And Sweden now controls the whole coast from Georgia to edge of Texas. The French Ai was stupid enough to sell me New Orleans in echange for some useless indian terriroty :D

 

Certain factions, such as Sweden, were not getting income due to a bug; it was reportedly fixed in today's patch. That might be it.

 

I'm not really interested in RtI because the impression I have is that (a) it's still a tutorial in that functions gradually open up to you, and I hate having to play with limited functionality; (b) it's got a lot of 'cinematic storytelling' stuff that I'm really not interested in (unless CA somehow made it pretty funny?). Might give it a try later on, but I like my British campaign and I'll probably try France and the Dutch next.

[Gorgon]

After the last patch the game hangs my computer whenever I order one of my ships to board.

 

This is bad. Can't risk damage to my HDD as a result of powering it off manually all the time.

[Morgoth]

I'll let Empire ripe a few months with patches before I start playing a game.

[Gorgon]

My god

 

'This game is currently unavailable. Steam error'.

 

'Updating steam'. (non responsive update progress bar)

 

'please check your internet connection'. (it's fine)

 

This is really pushing it. My first and last game with steam.

[Pidesco]

Why would anyone in Europe buy a game available in retail from Steam? I ordered my copy from the UK (should arrive tomorrow ), and it cost me 30€. The edition with the extra units is less than 40€, I believe.

 

Edit: Actually, that's no longer true. The Special Edition now costs the same as the regular edition. The little bastards.

[Kaftan Barlast]

Yeah, since it takes about as long to download a game from steam as for it to arrive in the mail, its completely useless to buy it digital. It doesnt matter if you've got a gigabit connection, their servers are in a constant state of bog-down/slow as hell/unavailable

[Pidesco]

Their servers could be fast, ninja like, magical servers, that it would still not justify a 60% price increase for a game. It just goes to show how brick and mortar retailers still seem to have most publishers' balls in a vice.

[Tigranes]

The use of steam is fundamentally retarded. There's no question about it.

 

Seriously, look at it from an abstract point of view. You are introducing a middleman into the process when a middleman is not required: a middleman which MAY have some advantages to certain degrees on a case by case basis, but will always run a risk of stuff screwing up at every opportunity. In other words, you are making a step which is guaranteed to increase the risk of failure and frustration in every step involved. What's the payoff? In this case, secondary things that are nowhere as important as GETTING YOUR GAME GOING ON TIME.

 

I love the game but I feel bad about spending money to support such an idiotic decision, it's like I'm contributing to the global stupidity pool.

 

....

 

Well, time to declare war on Mysore.

[Calax]

The use of steam is fundamentally retarded. There's no question about it.

 

Seriously, look at it from an abstract point of view. You are introducing a middleman into the process when a middleman is not required: a middleman which MAY have some advantages to certain degrees on a case by case basis, but will always run a risk of stuff screwing up at every opportunity. In other words, you are making a step which is guaranteed to increase the risk of failure and frustration in every step involved. What's the payoff? In this case, secondary things that are nowhere as important as GETTING YOUR GAME GOING ON TIME.

 

I love the game but I feel bad about spending money to support such an idiotic decision, it's like I'm contributing to the global stupidity pool.

 

....

 

Well, time to declare war on Mysore.

I don't know if it's just the fact that it works beautifully in america but I love steam. It's probably the best drm scheme you'll find currently so I don't mind it that much.

 

That said, I've been working my way through the "birth of america" campaign, I'm not very far, but usually the battles I get into have been VERY good terrain for me. By very good I mean I got into a fight and was surprised to find the terrain gave me a natural killing lane (A very small valley with a villiage on one side and a rocky outcrop on the other, both higher than the valley of course). I promptly set myself up so that the large majority of my army was pointed into the valley, with 3 regiments covering my flanks. The AI being an idiot, zoomed most of his force right where I'd hoped and got diced to pieces. He did try to flank but for the most part the three regiments I kept out of the ally was able to handle it. I did have to shift one of my deeper units out to a flank to shore up defenses with the 1 regiment that had held off 2 native troops.

 

Then I got into a Siege fight where he tried to break my siege. I had a HUGE hill on one side of me so I promptly stuck three cannon up there with two infantry divisions while arraying the rest of my forces on the lower ground on the left. Fight starts and I'm already shelling their troops, I did have a small problem when a cavalry team zipped by my two divisions and started beating the tar out of my cannon, but I fixed that by sending one of my own cav divisions up to counter. By the end of it I had a HUGE mass of infantry in melee (I'd encircled and demolished most of his troops when they attacked me) with the enemy general while two colonials beat up an artillary team and took the fort. The survivors on their side were six to my 1400 (I started with 1600 and they started with about 1000 I think.)

 

anyway here's the results for the first one

[Niten_Ryu]

I don't know why but if I DL anything from europen locations in steam, I might as well use ancent modem. I changed DL location to East Coast US and now I get about 400kb/s. Not optimal but much better.

[Tigranes]

I don't know why but if I DL anything from europen locations in steam, I might as well use ancent modem. I changed DL location to East Coast US and now I get about 400kb/s. Not optimal but much better.

 

I get five. Don't you worry.

[Gorgon]

Why would anyone in Europe buy a game available in retail from Steam? I ordered my copy from the UK (should arrive tomorrow ), and it cost me 30

[Pope]

Wait, am I getting this right: you need an internet connection to play?

 

That would suck, since my gaming pc does not have one.

[Hurlshort]

I noticed a few days ago that Steam was taking a long time to load up. If I tried to restart it, it became unresponsive. I found just waiting a few minutes seemed to work.

 

It's definitely not perfect.

[Kaftan Barlast]

I went to a lecture held by one of the smaller publishers around and they really liked steam; the two simple reasons were:

 

1) Steam takes a much smaller percentage of the selling price than retail shops, so the publisher gets more money

2) The cost of packaging(minor) and distribution(major) is completely eliminated. Yet more money for the publisher.

[Hurlshort]

I have no problem with the developer getting more of my money, particularly when I'm paying the same price as I would in the store.

[Zoma]

Problem with Steam is its pretty difficult to distribute nifty nice stuffs like Collector's Edition since you'll only get the software. Plus if Steam ever falls apart one day from being hacked or such, your games are pretty much inaccessible until its back online. Furthermore its constantly relying on internet connection, so its another factor Steam is dependent on to keep its games running.

 

Its not a perfect system, simply an alternative with both advantages and disadvantages to the present DRM schemes.

[Calax]

Problem with Steam is its pretty difficult to distribute nifty nice stuffs like Collector's Edition since you'll only get the software. Plus if Steam ever falls apart one day from being hacked or such, your games are pretty much inaccessible until its back online. Furthermore its constantly relying on internet connection, so its another factor Steam is dependent on to keep its games running.

 

Its not a perfect system, simply an alternative with both advantages and disadvantages to the present DRM schemes.

Actually once you've got steam on your computer and the games you want on it, you can set it to run in "offline mode" which will allow you to run it disconnected from the net. You do need the 'net for the first install but after that you can run in offline mode and either manually update it or let it hook up every so often to download automatic updates.

[Moatilliatta]

I think it needs to hook up every so often even in offline mode.

 

@Tigranes

I'm pretty sure that part of the reason they're using steam is that they want to use steamworks for their multiplayer and as such it is needed.

 

I have bought this now and damn does it take a while to download.

 

I'll also mention that it can be usefull to buy over steam since they're selling a mega pack that includes all the 3D total wars and their expansion packs, in case you haven't got all of it. This is the one I bought.

[Bokishi]

Plus if Steam ever falls apart one day from being hacked or such, your games are pretty much inaccessible until its back online. Furthermore its constantly relying on internet connection, so its another factor Steam is dependent on to keep its games running.

 

I recall hearing that steam stores emergency game keys that get sent out to you, which frees your purchased game's dependence on steam, should they go under

[Kaftan Barlast]

Plus if Steam ever falls apart one day from being hacked or such, your games are pretty much inaccessible until its back online. Furthermore its constantly relying on internet connection, so its another factor Steam is dependent on to keep its games running.

 

I recall hearing that steam stores emergency game keys that get sent out to you, which frees your purchased game's dependence on steam, should they go under

 

 

Hehe, yeah I bet they do. But here in the real world, when Steam shuts its doors, our games are gone.